Piffy on a rock bun …………… and other travels with my past

Now I have always taken those sayings of my youth for granted, and very rarely pondered on their origins or how they have survived from childhood and been passed on to my sons.

Me, 1961-62

Most pop up without any effort and roll off the tongue to fit the occasion.

There will be many that I grew up with, but a few are still regularly in use.  They include “piffy on a rock bun”, “the wreck of the Hesperus”, “black as Newgate’s knocker”, and “like the back of a tram smash”, all of which will be instantly recognized by anyone who was born in the first half of the last century.

They are what they are, instant comments on a situation, instantly used and then forgotten, but yesterday in a family conversation, it became apparent that our Polly had never heard the expression and was fascinated and amused when Joshua used it.

They were leaving to drive back to Leicester, I was on the doorstep watching, and Josh muttered “why is dad standing there ‘like piffy on a rock bun’?”.

Apparently, Polly had never heard Josh use the expression, but like his dad it will be rooted deep in his upbringing.

And that got me thinking about the shed loads of ones that are embedded deep in me.
Some are easier to track than others, and so “like the back of a tram smash” must come from mother and father, while others like Newgate’s knocker are much older.

Record sleeve, 1920s

Along the way there are a few more which I absorbed and can track specifically to a time and place.  Of these “like Reggie Page” is fixed in the years I was with Kay who grew up in the north east in Seaham Harbour and went to school with Reggie Page, who could never quite dress himself.

So, his socks were always at half mast, his shirt buttons wrongly fixed and on a very bad day, he managed to get his jumper on back to front.

And so, the saying was born, which stuck with me and still on occasion tumbles out to fit the moment.

What fascinates me, is that as some of these fade through time and pass out of common usage, others will surface.

In the same way some have a specific place of origin.  “Black as Newgate’s knocker", refers to the door handle of the old Newgate prison in London and will be one I heard from friends and their family, while “like piffy on a rock bun”, is apparently from the northwest, although mum who was from the Midlands and Dad from Gateshead both used it all the time.

Greenwich, 1979

Most I never questioned, and so it has been a surprise to me that “like a lemon” is the southern equivalent of “piffy on a rock bun”.

I suppose for generations many will have stayed local, but the advent of television and soaps like Coronation Street will have taken them in the front rooms of the entire country.

Of course, they sit with many more sayings which derive directly from popular shows on the radio and TV, which were either coined by the scriptwriters or made popular by a celebrity or comedian.

At which point I won’t show my age, or my preoccupation with the wireless over the television by quoting from ITMA, the Goons, or Take It From Here, and instead wonder just how many today will use the expression “the wreck of the Hesperus”, or know that it may originate from a poem by the US poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which was  in his collection Ballads and Other Poems, from 1841.

To which someone will mutter “well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs”.

Location; all over

Pictures, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The skip ……. a man with a van …… and tales of recycling ….. with a nod to the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters

 There is a lot to be said for the recycling man with his van.

I say man, but there is more than one, and as like as not it will be a woman.

Some come quietly in the early morning while others will announce their presence with a loudspeaker alternating between bursts of music and the cry, “fridges, old boilers, pipes and assorted scrap”.

For those like me who were born in the first half of the last century, it brings back memories of the Rag and Bone Man who travelled the streets with a horse and cart and called for “any old iron” or whatever took his fancy.

Then like now it was a one-way trade in which you disposed of the goods, which he accepted and later would sort out and sell on.

As a form of recycling, it worked and does so again.

So early yesterday morning the man with the van stopped outside Sidney the skip, rooted round, picking out a sink and a couple of kitchen cupboards.

Being a discerning sort of chap, there were items he discarded having first pulled them out, inspected them before throwing them back.

Nor will he have been alone.  One skip close to us was visited three times one morning, with a different team calling the following day, when the skip was again almost full.

Now none of this is new, and a quick flick through the past will reveal the extent to which people of the mid-19th century made an even more precarious living from other people’s rubbish.

They were on the margins of poverty and garnered an income from sifting through the left behinds.

So, my Mayhew* written in the first half of the 19th century picked over occupations like the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters, all of whom found value in the valueless.

Shore workers worked the sewers, in “gangs of three and four for the sake of company, and in order to better defend themselves from the rats …… [finding] great quantities of money – of copper money especially; sometimes they dive their arm down to the elbow in the mud and filth and bring up shillings, sixpences, half crowns and sovereigns. **

Even more central to London life were the dustmen who carted away the dust and ash from the capital’s homes.  

Mayhew estimated that the consumption of coal in the metropolis was, 3,500,000 tons per annum which in turn created a vast mountain of ash and cinders, and as ever where there was muck there was money. 

Like everywhere that money was made by a handful of contractors while the dirty work fell to those they employed.

These men carried the ash to the dust yards where an army of labourer’s sifted through the rubbish which threw up oyster shells, old bricks, old boots and shoes, old ten kettles, as well as old rags and bones.  None of which could be recycled into brick making but ended up as hard core for new buildings or new roads.

While old shoes were sold to London shoemakers who used them to stuff between the in-sole and the outer one, leaving the rags and bones to be disposed of at the marine-store shops. ***

It is a story which is worth a deeper study, but for now I think I will just reflect that the passage of 170 or so years has left our man with his van marginally better off.

We shall see.

Location; London 1851, Chorlton, 2021

Pictures; The London Dustman, and View of a Dust Yard, London, 1851, and skips I have known giving up their treasures, Chorlton, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Henry Mayhew, London Labour & the London Poor 1851London Labour & the London Poor 1851

** Mayhew page 330

*** ibid Mayhew page 350

Passing Hartley's College on Alexandra Road South

This is one of those pictures which I never dreamed I would come across.

We are looking at Hartley’s College and it is another from Valentine’s Snapshots of Alexandra Park.

Now I don’t have a date but judging by the tramlines and the fact that the building was renamed Hartley College in 1906 should be a rough guide.

The building was a training centre for the Methodist Ministry,  later a hall of residence and is currently a school.

Picture; Hartley’s College from Valentine’s Snapshots of Alexandra Park, date unknown, courtesy of Ann Love

Of the street sellers of Ices and Ice Cream .... and the day in 1851 when Mr. Mayhew got it very wrong

Now when I want to fall back into the London of the 1850s, there is no better source than the observations of Henry Mayhew whose descriptions of London life appeared first as articles in the London daily press, and were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.*

They are a fascinating insight into how the poor lived and worked, and chief amongst these were the street sellers, and these I have already written about.**

And so as I have become interested again in the manufacture and sale of ice cream in the 19th century I turned to Mr. Mayhew, who for once didn’t quite get it right. 

"I have already treated of the street luxury of pine-apples, and have now to deal with the greater street rarity of ice creams.

A quick-witted street seller – but, not in the provision’ line- conversing with me upon this subject, and said: ‘Ices in the streets! Aye, and there will be jellies next and then mock turtle, and the real ticket, sir.  I don’t know nothing of the difference between the real thing and the mock, but I once had some cheap mock in an eating house, and it tasted like stewed tripe with a little glue.

You’ll keep your eyes open sir, at the Great Exhibition; and you’ll see a new move or two in the streets, take my word for it.  Penny glasses of champagne, I shouldn’t wonder.

Not withstanding the sanguine anticipation of my street friend, the sale of ices in the streets has not been such as to offer any great encouragement to a preservation of the traffic”.

Alas Mr. Mayhew didn’t include pictures of the ice cream sellers, so I have fallen back on The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall.

Location; London in 1851

Pictures; The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall, 1851 from  London Labour & the London Poor 

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*London Labour and the London Poor, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/London%20Labour%20and%20the%20the%20London%20Poor

Walking along Gun Street in the spring of 1851

Gun Street in 1844

Now this is another one of the walks I would like to have taken in the spring of 1851.

It would have started just past New Cross, where Great Ancoats Street joined Oldham Road and Swan Street and running from Bond Street, crossed George Street, Blossom Street and finished at Jersey Street.

It is still there today, a narrow street, dominated by tall modern buildings a few workshops which long ago lost any entrances onto the road and some open spaces.

In total I don’t suppose it would have taken more than five minutes to walk its length in the 1850s, but in that short time there would have been all that the curious spectator might have wanted to observe.

For here were small terraced properties, the dark and secretive courts hidden from view and plenty of pubs and beer shops.

Gun Street in 1901

Here too was a cross section of the city’s working population from skilled journeyman to shop keeper, textile worker and a heap of unskilled labour.  And reminding us that Manchester still moved courtesy of the horse Gun Street had a blacksmith.  Perhaps even more surprising was that in that year of 1851 there was still a handloom weaver and an agricultural labourer.

In total there were 384 people living in just 63 houses with some crammed into the cellars.  The rents ranged from 1 shilling 6d to 4 shillings and 6d when a factory girl might earn between 7 and 9 shillings, a week a labourer 18 shillings and a police constable 20 shillings.

And along that short street you could have heard the accents of the rural north as well as London, and the Midlands but dominating all would have been that of the Irish, for here amongst our 384 inhabitants were 235 from Ireland and only 125 from Manchester.**

And as you would expect there is much more than we could uncover, from poor sanitation, adulterated food, the large numbers of pubs and beer shops and those dark and secretive courts hidden from view.

But all that is for later.  Instead I shall leave you with the thought that had you tired of Gun Street and returned to New Cross you chanced at best a rowdy noisy meeting place and at worst a venue for popular discontent.

For most of the last half century, there had been protests and like that of April 1812 in Oldham Road at New Cross when a food cart carrying food for sale at the markets in Shudehill was stopped and its load carried off.

Nearby shops were also attacked and looted.  The mob was eventually dispersed by soldiers but only as far as Middleton.  There they met with an assembly of handloom weavers, miners and out of work factory operatives gathered to protest against the introduction of power loom machinery at Barton and Sons weaving mill.

The mob which had grown to 2000, was dispersed by “A party of soldiers , horse and foot, from Manchester arriving, pursued those misguided people, some of whom made a feeble stand; but here again death was the consequence, five of them being shot and many severely wounded.”    

While after the events at Peterloo in 1819 the military and the local police patrolled the streets like some occupying force, and in the early evening with tensions still high a large crowd gathered at New Cross.

Gun Street in 2011

Some of the crowd began throwing stones at the police and soldiers opened fire.  Before the crowd had dispersed, Joseph Ashworthy had been killed and several others lay injured.  Not surprisingly many of those injured in this event came from that close network of streets around Gun Street.

Next; those dark and secretive courts hidden from view.

*Rate Books
**1851 census

Location; Manchester




Pictures; part of Gun Street from the OS map of Manchester, 1842-44, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Gun Street from Blossom Street, A Bradburn, 1901  M11341, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and Gun Street from Blossom Street 2011, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

1934 and inside the Independent College in Whalley Range

We are in the grounds of the Independent College in Whalley Range and the year is 1934.

Our picture is a postcard which “R” says “is a new view of the college which I thought you might like to see.  

It gives rather a good view of the grounds I think.”

He was writing to Mr and Mrs Nelson of Garston Old Road in Liverpool and he went on to say that he had “managed a good spot of work,” and was looking forward to “seeing something of a friend of mine who is preaching at Ormskirk on Sunday.”

There is nothing more to help us with the identity of “R” but given that the college had been built “educate young men of decided piety and competent talents for the Christian ministry,”* I think we can be fairly confident he was destined for a religious career.

By the time “R” was doing his spot of work the college had been open for 92 years and had continued “the preparation of young men for the ministry of the Independent church”** carrying on the work of the  Blackburn Independent Academy which had opened in 1816.

Such independent establishments had been necessary by the ban on dissenters from attending universities.  So here along with the study of theology students “will have the opportunity of gaining philosophical and scientific knowledge, in addition to the classics and mathematics.”

There were to be two resident professors and about fifty-two students the cost was to be met by public subscription and the hope was that this would in time be met by endowments.

The original design was for a gothic style building with a tall tower and a principal front 261 feet in length including two professors’ houses at either end with cloisters in between serving as an arcade in which the students can take exercise in wet weather.  There were to be three stories surmounted by battlements about 40 feet high.

“The arrangements in the interior of the College, forming a communication with different suites of rooms, are well designed and exceedingly simple consisting of corridors running the extreme length of the front and of either wing. The lower story of the building which is sufficiently high above the ground to ensure dryness is intended entirely for servants, and the corridor which connects the different offices runs along the main building.

Entering the College by the broad flight of steps in the basement of the tower we come to the entrance hall on the second or main floor which is a lofty room about 36 feet by 32 and open to the roof.”***

And I suppose this description would have been recognised by “R” as well as the countless other students who continued to study there until its closure in 1980.

Later; more stories and pictures of the college.

Pictures; of the college in 1934 from the Lloyd Collection The Assembly Hall and grounds from The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93

* resolution of the committee held in the vestry of the Mosley Street Chapel, Manchester February 1816, and quoted by Thompson, Joseph,  in The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93, Manchester 1893 Memorial Volume, p18
** The Manchester Guardian 1842
*** The Manchester Guardian 1842

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 93 ….. under the arches at Hoyle Street

To be fair Hoyle Street is still there, running from Fairfield Street down to the Ring Road.

But I think it cuts a sad appearance, and today is best known by those seeking free car parking space and the odd fan of railway viaducts, because a  big chunk of it is covered by the brick viaducts that stretch out from Piccadilly Railway Station while the rest is bordered by open land and a few industrial units.

It is a place waiting for something to happen, and no doubt that something will be blocks of apartments and perhaps even in a new “office quarter”.

And that has been its fate for over 70 years.  

In 1950, the entire stretch from Fairfield Street to Tipping Street was devoid of any buildings save one pub, and a couple of warehouses with the ominous word “Ruins” recorded on the section by the River Medlock.*

But it hadn’t always been so.  The OS map of 1894 records a line of houses the length of Hoyle Street all the way to Tipping Street and dominated halfway down by the Britannia Brewery.  

Although strictly speaking Hoyle Street ended where the Medlock crossed underneath, as  the remaining part was New York Street.

Just when Hoyle Street was cut is still unclear.  It is absent from Johnston’s map of 1818 but is there by 1840, when a Mr. Adam Jackson was living at no 3.  He described himself as a “Teacher of Mathematics and  was listed as such in Slater’s Directory for 1855.

And he rubbed shoulders with neighbours who might equally be regarded as a cut above the average.  

These included, an engraver, a manager, a solicitor’s clerk, a Professor of Music and a “superintendent of police”.  

But it was still a mixed community and there was also a shop keeper, warehouseman, a file cutter, mechanic and cooper.

It is difficult to work out just what the properties were like, but Mr. Jackson and some of his neighbours were paying 5s a week in rent. 

At which point trying to make comparisons based on total income is fraught with difficulties, but in the 1850s  a male teacher in a National School would earn a £1 a week and female teacher 6s and manual workers might bring in more or less depending on their skills and circumstance.  So a textile worker in his 30s could command a wage of 22s 8d,  which was much better than an agricultural labourer who might be paid between  15s to 21s  a week with a few on 24s.**

Just what the 5s a week brought is also difficult to work out.  Only a few of the properties on Hoyle Street had survived into 1911, when the census return recorded the number of rooms in each house.

Most of those left consisted of 5 rooms, but some were only three.

Sadly Mr. Jackson’s house is not one of those that made it onto the 1911 census and that I think must be because it was swept away by an extension to the railway viaduct in 1905.

Leaving me just to reflect on what Mr. Jackson and his wife Margaret would have seen as they walked out of their home on a summer’s day in 1851.

Their home was in the shadow of the first railway viaduct, while opposite there was a timber yard and the Ardwick Saw Mill.

The River Medlock which flowed just a few feet away was still open to the sky, and supplied water for the Britannia Brewery and a host of factories close by which included two dye works and the Mayfield Print Works.

Of course, we will never know just what they thought of where they lived, but I am guessing it was a world away from the rural Cumberland where they had both grown up.

The incessant noise from the factories, the regular sound of railway trains passing close by, and the pervading smells from the river and various dyeworks were something I doubt they ever really came to terms with.

But that is so much historical speculation and tosh and seems a good point to close.

Pictures;  Hoyle Street Bridge, 1898, H. Entwhistle, m66779, m66778, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Hoyle Street in 1851, from Adshead map of Manchester 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ Temperance Street, Hoyle Street Junction looking towards Ardwick Station; and the River Medlock, 2020 from the collection of John Anthony Hewitt

*The Corporation Inn

**Textile workers, Frow, Edmund & Ruth, Radical Salford, Neil Richardson, Swinton,1984 page 34, and agricultural labourers, Agricultural Labourers’ Earnings, Parliamentary Papers 1861